Justice

• Justice is a concept that can be described as fairness or equality - Perelman emphasises the need to treat cases equally. He defines formal justice as 'A principle of action in which people need to be treated in the same way'
• 1. The meaning of justice - types and definitions

  • Substantive justice: The contents of the law must be just and fair
  • Procedural justice: How the legal system operates must be fair
  • Aristotle stressed the need for proportionality between parties for justice to be served, e.g. CRA 2015 balances the interests of the consumer and trader by ensuring the consumer is protected
  • Aquinas considered justice as governing our relationships with other people - the end result of justice is for the common good, the individual and for the community. Justice is treating people as they deserve to be treated
• 2. Theories of justice

  • Utilitarianism - Bentham: This means bringing happiness to the greatest number (focusing on maximising happiness to achieve justice). The more an action increases overall happiness, the more valuable it is so is achieving justice, e.g. Sarah's law
  • Distributive justice - Aquinas: Fair allocation of resources among the different areas of society, e.g. law on equal pay and minimum wages. A just state gives people what is due to them, it would be wrong to pay workers an equal amount for unequal work - goods are allocated based on merit, rank and need
• 3. The extent to which law achieves justice

  • Procedural justice - The way our legal system operates must be fair and just, making and implementing actions according to fair processes, e.g. Lord Devlin described the use of juries as 'the lamp that shows freedom lives'
  • Substantive justice - The content of the law itself must be just, e.g. mandatory life sentences for murder
  • Corrective justice - Where wrongdoings take place, there must be a system to put it right and correct the injustice, e.g. Guilford 4/Birmingham 6 (False accusations of being IRA terrorists)
• 4. The extent to which contract law achieves justice

  • Contract (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999 was passed by Parliament to allow third parties to claim if they met the criteria outlined in the act
  • This was to avoid injustices as seen in previous cases such as Dunlop v Selfridge